About Me

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Can
you trust your memories? Can you trust memories of family members who have left
behind their stories?

I
recently read the memoir, Educated,
by Tara Westover. It was a grueling read and depressing to the end. I struggled
through learning about Westover’s disturbing rural “survivalist” childhood of
abuse and neglect. The stories were intense, emotional, and left me exhausted. But
Westover’s alluring writing kept me reading. It was like staring at a bad car
accident when you know you should look away. I will never forget the book yet
can’t decide if I could recommend it to others.

Westover
sometimes started a scene by explaining how she remembered the past, but then
added that a sibling remembered it differently and told what those differences
were. She would even occasionally ask herself if her memory was to be trusted,
which then gave her the drive to find evidence of past experiences to back up
her memories.

When
I looked online at reviews and what people were saying about Educated, I realized the book has become
controversial. Some of Westover’s siblings and family friends are claiming Educated to be all lies. Perhaps that is
to be expected—and I am making no judgement here.

How
do we deal with remembering the past differently than others who were part of
that experience? If those others can’t accept our reality, they may try to
change the past by denying it. As Westover put it, “reality becomes fluid.” Educated may be an extreme example, but
most of us know memory can be fickle. In grad school, I learned that because memory
is not reliable, you can only represent
an event. There are as many versions of an event as there are people who took
part. We were also taught to approximate dialogue that we no longer remembered
word for word.

Memories
can be fragmentary and sometimes influenced by how we want things to have been.
Mary Karr, the author of The Liar’s Club,
said, “To minimize regrets and justify our behaviors, we sometimes convince
ourselves of alternative explanations.”

But
how else do we learn, but from our memories or the experiences of others? Even
if our memories are not fully formed with all the facts, they often capture our
motivations and desires. They may create an image that is consistent with what
we felt an experience meant. There is much to be learned by examining our life.
And when we write of
emotional truth—no one else should argue.

There’s
no need to analyze all writing coming from memory for accuracy, but it doesn’t
hurt to understand how memory works. Stories are usually written in
hindsight—understanding and reflecting on experiences. And there’s no question
that by writing about our lives we become more aware and gain clarity and
knowledge.

If
we are writing about ancestors from stories that they handed down, how do we
know their narratives are accurate? Is there a concern that we might be
twisting the reality of the past? Like any good researcher, we need to look for
the evidence. You may find that the dates don’t line up, or that the
third-great-grandfather who didn’t believe in slavery did in fact own slaves.
Interview relatives, read diaries, letters, documents, newspaper accounts, and
check public records such as census, vital, court, taxes, municipal registry of
deeds and land, or books on local history. If you can’t authenticate something,
use attributions such as: I believe, or it stands to reason, or it’s possible
that…

My
family holds hatred for a man who lived in the mid-1800s. It was said that he
took land from my ancestor, a poor widow whose husband owed just one more
mortgage payment when he died. Because the mortgage was not fully paid, the
entire mortgage was forfeited and the house and land taken from the widow. When
I did the research, I found there was no record of that “hated” gentleman ever
owning the land to begin with.

Not
everything is in a record. When oral history is passed down, details are lost
or separate experiences are woven together. The telling may become distorted, amplified,
and move further from the truth. Many have been guilty of romanticizing the
past.

I’m
convinced some of the best stories aren’t documented because they were meant to
be kept secret. To tell a good story, we need the details that probably aren’t
available. This is where the decision may be made to write the story as
historical fiction rather than biography or creative nonfiction.

Nowadays
we read memoirs of harsh realities and best sellers that often tell of
dysfunctional families and squalid childhoods, but it wasn’t long ago that
families kept these things secret at
all costs. To keep quiet was a loyalty to the family or a way to keep the peace.
Now it seems we are ready to arrive at a larger truth about families and all
their defects. On social media many “tell all” and don’t seem to miss the loss
of privacy. Even then, perhaps it’s not all truth.